GeneWatch PR: Bioeconomy a science fantasy: new GeneWatch report

A new
GeneWatch UK report concludes that billions of
pounds of taxpayers' money have been wasted in R&D investments intended to
deliver a new biotech economy (1).

Responding
to this week's report on science funding by the Science and Technology
Committee of MPs (2), GeneWatch's Director Dr Helen Wallace said: "The big problem with the science budget is
not its total size but that the wrong people are deciding how to spend it. A
cycle of hype is driving research
investment decisions, which have become disconnected from reality."

The MPs'
Committee is also due to issue a report this week (midday Thursday) on bioengineering
(including genetic modification, GM).

The new
GeneWatch report questions whether current investments in the biosciences,
including genetic modification (GM) of plants, and human genome sequencing, can
actually deliver the claimed future benefits to quality of life and the
economy. It finds that, after decades of investment, the net value of the
bio-economy worldwide has been estimated to be zero or negative.

Only two
types of GM crops have been commercialised on any scale - insect-resistance and
herbicide-tolerance - and only the US company Monsanto has made
significant profits from them. A new generation of nitrogen-fixing and
salt-tolerant GM crops were promised nearly 30 years ago: many scientists are
sceptical that such products can be delivered and even enthusiasts predict that
several decades more investment would be needed before any prospect of
delivery.

There is
widespread recognition amongst geneticists that most diseases in most people,
and many adverse drug reactions, are too complex and too dependent on environmental
factors to be predictable by screening people's genes. Yet, significant investments of taxpayers'
money continue to be made with a view to integrating scans of people's genomes into
electronic medical records. Money wasted includes substantial sums in R&D
investments, plus over 12 billion pounds allocated to implementing the UK centralised
system of electronic medical records known as the 'Spine', with the aim of
implementing a 'genetic revolution' in healthcare. Despite massive publicity,
commercial companies have failed to sell more than a few tens of thousands of
commercial human gene tests, because they are not useful to predict most
diseases in most people (3).

"The Government and the European Union have wasted billions of taxpayers' money on a
science fantasy", said Dr Wallace, "From
the outset, the vision of a biotech economy failed to acknowledge the
complexity of health, biology, society, the environment and agriculture".

The report documents
how research investment decisions have been taken by a small circle of
unaccountable advisors, including the New Labour donors known as the 'biotech
barons'. Alternative 'on-the-ground' approaches to improving health and farming
have been side-lined, starved of funding, or even axed altogether, leading to
significant opportunity costs due to the failure to implement existing
knowledge and best practice in areas such as public health and farmland
management.

"The biotech barons and their friends deserve
a prize for sleaze that goes way beyond the rest of politics", said Dr
Wallace, "It is time to stop
unaccountable advisors from pushing pseudo-scientific claims about the future
of the biotech economy".

Diversion
of potential food crops and land to industrial-scale production of biofuels
(agrofuels) has long been proposed as part of the bio-economy: warnings about
the effect on food prices and supplies made a decade ago have been ignored, and
subsidised biofuel production - much of it using GM maize planted in North and
South America - was one contributing factor in the 2008 food crisis. Developing
new genetically modified micro-organisms (GMMs) to break down cellulose in
woody plants to make ethanol, has been proposed as a potential future solution
for the current problems caused by the diversion of food and land into growing agrofuels.
However, this is unlikely to be technically feasible or cost-effective and will
create new problems of its own if GMMs escape and survive in the environment.

The GeneWatch
report concludes that science does have an important role to play in society
and in the economy. However, there is an urgent need to re-assess what has been
delivered by the major political and financial investments made in the
bio-economy over the past three decades, and to reform the current decision-making
systems for R&D investments. Scarce resources must be allocated more
effectively.